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“Identifying with the Aggressor”: From the Authoritarian to Neo-liberal Personality

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Book cover Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus

Zusammenfassung

This chapter seeks to provide a preliminary reconstruction of the concept of the “Authoritarian Personality”, which Theodor W. Adorno developed in collaboration with Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, to try to understand the latent potential for fascism in the United States in the post-war period culminating in the eponymously titled volume published in the “Studies in Prejudice” Series. In contrast with the burgeoning contributions to the direct and largely uncritical appropriation and application of the concept in connection with the rise of the far-right, symbolized by Donald J. Trump, the current chapter urges some caution. More specifically, it argues that some of its key sociological and psychological assumptions need to be rethought. The concept of state capitalism needs to be supplanted with an analysis of neoliberalism. Moreover, the oedipal premises of orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis must be supplanted by a more dialogical and relational conception of the “identification with the aggressor” drawn from the work of Sandor Ferenczi.

First published in Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 15 January 2018, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12338.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Kanada

    Samir Gandesha

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  1. Samir Gandesha
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Correspondence to Samir Gandesha .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Intern. Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft e.V., Paderborn, Germany

    Rüdiger Dannemann

  2. German Department and Philosophy Department, Duke University, Durham, USA

    Henry W. Pickford

  3. FB Sozial- & Kulturwissenschaften, Hochschule Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Hans-Ernst Schiller

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Gandesha, S. (2018). “Identifying with the Aggressor”: From the Authoritarian to Neo-liberal Personality. In: Dannemann, R., Pickford, H., Schiller, HE. (eds) Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20520-1_13

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